Books

After hearing from Grant Fritchey that "Anyone who wants to know what DevOps really means should read this" Claire Brooking picked up a copy of The Phoenix Project. This parable of an IT project on the brink of destruction is told with humor and insight. Claire reviews the book, finding that conflict, incidents and mistakes are inevitable – what counts is how the team members grow to manage and resolve them.Read more...

In this book Kalen Delaney introduces and explains how the new In-Memory OLTP engine works. The Hekaton internals knowledge offered in this book will help you migrate existing tables or databases to Hekaton, and get faster performance from your SQL Server applications than you ever thought possible.Read more...

Once you've done a number of SQL code-reviews, you'll be able to identify signs in the code that indicate all might not be well. These 'code smells' are coding styles that, while not bugs, suggest design problems with the code. In this PDF, Phil's put together 119 of those code smells, some generic, and some particular to SQL Server, so you can see what to avoid and why.Read more...

For efficient team-based database development, and reliable and repeatable database deployments, source control is not optional. This book provides just the right combination of theory and practical example to get you started quickly.Read more...

Tribal SQL, is a reflection of how a DBA's core and long-standing responsibilities sit alongside new thinking and fresh ideas about where the DBA role is going, and what it means to be a DBA in today's businesses. Read more...

If you want to learn how to optimize and troubleshoot Hyper-V, then this book, written by Microsoft people whose day job is to assist customers with precisely with these issues, is a safe bet. It is not, however, a book for anyone struggling to come to grips with the basics of Hyper-VRead more...

Fundamentals of SQL Server 2012 Replication provides a hands-on introduction to SQL Server replication. The book begins with a short overview that introduces you to the technologies that make up replication. In the following chapters, the book will walk you through setting up different replication scenarios. Read more...

When things go wrong, a DBA's reputation depends on an understanding of the transaction log, both what it does, and how it works. An effective response to a crisis requires rapid decisions based on understanding its role in ensuring data integrity.
This book shows you how to control your transaction log, so that it doesn't control you.Read more...

Microsoft have a lot to offer for anyone who is engaged in using Business Intelligence. The problem is in pulling together all the products in order to paint a picture of the entire landscape. Three book shed light on several different aspects, but there is plenty more to discover.Read more...

It is a measure of the range of facilities that are available to the database developer nowadays that three different books on the same general topic of TSQL programming can actually complement each other. Read more...

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Cookbook is a comprehensive resource for administrators and consultants looking for practical examples of Hyper-V technology. Beginners unfamiliar with Hyper-V and those who have worked with earlier versions can benefit from this book.Read more...

A book on Relational Database Design and Implementation is always welcome, especially when written by one of Simple-Talk's most popular authors, Louis Davidson. Bob Sheldon casts the critical eye on the book and smiles upon what he sees.Read more...

Experienced DBAs have a wealth of experience to rely on when it's time to troubleshoot a problem, but it can be harder if you're just starting out. Brad McGehee reviews a book designed to get new and accidental DBAs up to speed on their troubleshooting skills.Read more...

FILESTREAM is implemented as an extension to the VARBINARY(MAX) data type and allows large object data to be stored in a special folder on the NTFS file system, while bringing that data under the transactional control of SQL Server. This book describes both the way it works and the implementation, adminstration and troubleshooting of it.Read more...

Every Database Administrator, developer, report writer, and anyone else who writes T-SQL to access SQL Server data, must understand how to read and interpret execution plans. My book leads you right from the basics of capturing plans, through how to interrupt them in their various forms, graphical or XML, and then how to use the information you find there to diagnose the most common causes of poor query performance, and so optimize your SQL queries, and improve your indexing strategy.Read more...

A broad topic requires a thick book. the Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Bible is the work of several authors and comes to 59 chapters, yet it has all been edited into a single work that provides most of what you need to know about SQL Server outside your own specialization. Read more...

Your application can have impeachable indexes and queries, but they won't help you if you can't get to your data because another application has it locked. That's why every DBA and developer must understand SQL Server concurrency and how to troubleshoot excessive blocking or deadlocking. Kalen Delaney's book is your guide.Read more...

SQL and Relational Theory, by Chris Date, isn't likely to be a book that SQL's greatest defender, Joe Celko, would agree with. However, following the debates between Date and Celko on the relational purity of SQL has all the fascination of watching Godzilla wrestling King Kong.Read more...

Brad finds Glenn Berry's 'SQL Server Hardware' book to be a valuable reference, not so much for the actual hardware recommendations which will always go out of date, but more for the methodology for selecting hardware, and the wisdom that comes from long experience in doing so.Read more...

As well-engineered as the .NET framework is, it's not perfect, and it doesn't always get memory management right. To write truly fantastic software, you need to understand how .NET memory management actually works. This book will take you from the very basics of memory management, all the way to how the OS handles its resources, and will help you write the best code you can.Read more...

"In this Comunity Book project, I will describe everything that I believe a developer, versed in the art of procedural programming, needs to understand in order to write fast, efficient SQL Code. Your feedback will help shape the book, and determine exactly what is covered, and in what depth!" – Peter Larsson.Read more...

A DBA's tasks, from day-to-day, are rarely constant; with one exception: the need to ensure each and every day that any database in their charge can be restored and recovered, in the event of error of disaster. In this book, you'll discover how to perform each of these backup and restore operations using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), basic T-SQL scripts and Red Gate's SQL Backup tool.Read more...

In this book, Jean-Philippe Gouigoux provides both the theory and practical skills necessary to analyze and improve the performance of .NET code. By focusing on the 20% of code defects that account for 80% of performance loss, Jean-Philippe guides the reader through using a profiler and explains how to identify and correct performance bottlenecks. This book is for all developers who wish to boost the performance of their .NET code without having to embark on the steep slopes of tuning. Read more...

Fabiano Amorim has taken the time to reallv drill into the behavior of a small set of execution plan operators in an effort to explain the optimizer's behavior. He's explored why things happen, how you can change them, positively or negatively, and he's done it all in an approachable style.Read more...

Three SQL Server MVPs, and stalwarts of the SQLServerCentral and MSDN community forums, provide fascinating insight into the most common SQL Server problems, why they occur, and how they can be diagnosed using tools such as Performance Monitor, Dynamic Management Views and server-side tracing. The focus is on practical solutions for removing root causes of these problems, rather than "papering over the cracks".Read more...

SQL Server Hardware will provide the fundamental knowledge and resources you need to make intelligent decisions about choice, and optimal installation and configuration, of SQL Server hardware, operating system and the SQL Server RDBMS.Read more...

A Distribution Statistics object is a sampled map of the distribution of data in a table. Such statistics help the Query Optimizer of SQL Server's Database Engine to translate the 'logical' SQL Query into the best strategy for doing all the physical operations of joining, sorting, and selecting the data. Most of the time, this work happens effectively, but occasionally, if the statistics no longer reflect what is actually in the table, then queries can suddenly run grindingly slow. At this point, the DBA must intervene to correct the problem.
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This book will take you from the fundamentals of Statistics, Cost Estimation, Index Selection, and the Execution Engine, and guide you through the inner workings of the Query Optimization process, and throws in a pragmatic look at Parameterization and Hints along the way.Read more...

This book shows how to use a mixture of home-grown scripts, native SQL Server tools, and tools from the Red Gate SQL Toolbelt, to successfully develop database applications in a team environment, and make database development as similar as possible to "normal" development.Read more...

This is the book that will de-mystify the process of using Dynamic Management Views to collect the information you need to troubleshoot SQL Server problems. It will highlight the core techniques and "patterns" that you need to master, and will provide a core set of scripts that you can use and adapt for your own requirements.Read more...

Of almost a hundred Simple-Talk articles on topics of interest to System Adminstrators, we've chosen the best and most popular ones for an essential collection that packs a great deal of information about common tasks for the working System Adminstrator.Read more...

This is the book that will de-mystify the process of using Dynamic Management Views to collect the information you need to troubleshoot SQL Server problems. It will highlight the core techniques and "patterns" that you need to master, and will provide a core set of scripts that you can use and adapt for your own requirements.Read more...

In the Complete Guide .NET Performance and Optimization, Paul Glavich and Chris Farrell offer a comprehensive and essential handbook to anybody looking to set up a .NET testing environment and get the best results out of it, or just learn effective techniques for testing and optimizing their .NET applications.Read more...

Jaap's Practical Guide to Exchange Server 2010 draws upon all that experience to deliver an easy-to-use guide to this latest platform, full of useful examples and top tips for SysAdmins, both new and experienced.Read more...

Brad's Sure Guide to Maintenance Plans shows you how to use the Maintenance Plan Wizard and Designer to configure and schedule eleven core database maintenance tasks, ranging from integrity checks, to database backups, to index reorganizations and rebuilds. Read more...

John Magnabosco's excllent new book, "Protecting SQL Server Data", holds the key to encryption without fear. In it, John Magnabosco sweeps away some of the misconceptions surrounding SQL Server's encryption technologies, and demonstrates that, when properly planned and implemented, they are an essential tool in the DBA's fight to safeguard sensitive data.Read more...

A 2nd edition of Brad McGehee’s popular "career guide" for DBAs, designed to help new and prospective DBAs find their feet in the profession, and to advise those more-experienced on how they can excel at their jobs, and so become Exceptional DBAs...Read more...

The software industry is, just occasionally, more absurd than one would dare to imagine. Having spent most of his working life in its clutches, Phil Factor has pretty much "seen it all" and what's more he's prepared to tell what he knows. The second edition of Phil's "Confessions of an IT Manager" contains Phil's full repertoire of tales of institutional mayhem and software projects gone awry. Read more...

When information is exchanged in XML format, you need an agreement between the sender and receiver about the structure and content of the XML document. This "agreement" takes the form of an XSD (XML Schema Definition Language) Schema. Jacob Sebastian's book explains all...Read more...

Why is my query running slow? Why isn't my index getting used? In order to answer these questions, you have to ask the same return question in each case: have you looked at the execution plan? Grant Fritchey provides the only dedicated and detailed guide to this essential topic...Read more...